Izanagi and his sister-consort Izanami are the last of the primordial deities, charged by the heavenly gods to “make, consolidate, and give birth to” the drifting land below. Standing on the Floating Bridge of Heaven, they stir the brine with a jeweled spear:
廼以天之瓊〈瓊，玉也，此曰努。〉矛，指下而探之，是獲滄溟。其矛鋒滴瀝之潮，凝成一島，名之曰磤馭慮島
“Thereupon they thrust down the jewel-spear of Heaven and groping about therewith found the ocean. The brine which dripped from the point of the spear coagulated and became an island which received the name of Ono-goro-jima.” — Nihon Shoki, Book I; English tr. W. G. Aston, Nihongi (1896)
From that island, Onogoro, the pair descend, marry, and generate the islands of Japan and a host of nature deities. Izanami dies bearing the fire god Kagutsuchi, and Izanagi, grief-stricken, beheads his own son and travels to Yomi to reclaim her. He finds her decayed and swarming with maggots, breaks his promise not to look, and flees in horror, sealing the entrance with a massive boulder as she curses him from the other side.
Returned to the world of the living, Izanagi purifies himself in a river, and from that washing, undertaken alone, three of Japan’s greatest deities are born: Amaterasu from his left eye, Tsukuyomi from his right, and Susanoo from his nose. His work of creation complete, Izanagi retires from the world; tradition places his final dwelling on Awaji Island, where Izanagi Jingu stands today.
